The Strong Female Character
How you can write a strong female character with examples
Edited by Liz Jensen
The strong female character, or strong female lead, has become a recent fascination among writers. Of course, the strong female character is not a new concept, as seen in Jane Austen's novels, Mulan, and even in Greek mythology with gods like Artemis or Athena. Yet the strong female character has gained a ton of attention in the last century—you might think of Katniss Everdeen, Erza Scarlet, or Black Widow.
Maybe it’s because as a society we’ve shifted towards women's empowerment (many people have their own definitions of this and it can get political, remember, this is a discussion about storytelling). Maybe it’s because there are more women creators, or maybe there are more people in the world who’ve come to acknowledge Éowyn in Lord of the Rings or Elizabeth Swann from Pirates of the Caribbean as characters who bring depth to stories: they possess internal and external struggles, femininity and courage.
But there are many strong female characters who are not written well.
Impacting Culture Blog’s post “The Failure of Strong Female Characters” outlines a few major fails of the strong female character:
“If a movie treats femininity like a weakness, stripping the “strong” girl of girliness as if that would prevent her from being capable – that’s an equality fail.
If a story is female driven, but that driving female stands alone against an all-male backdrop – that’s an equality fail.
When female characters are unnecessarily sexualized and objectified, but it’s spun as empowerment – that’s an equality fail.
When male characters are sexualized and objectified, as if overcorrecting in the other direction is the solution to the problem – yes, that’s an equality fail, too.
When a woman derives her supposed strength from her sexuality, whether that manifests as distinguishing herself by getting naked, seducing someone to use them toward an end goal, outdoing the crudeness of her male counterparts, or flexing her feminine wiles to get what she wants – that’s an equality fail.”
There are a few characters I can think of that fall into those categories above: Black Widow (I would say in all of the MCU films except the Black Widow movie), Captain Marvel, and even Erza Scarlet.
Who are your favorite strong female characters? Your least favorite? Leave a comment below!
So what constitutes a strong female character?
Character
Characters have flaws. Scratch that, good characters have flaws. Flaws don’t necessarily mean bad traits—they can be really good traits implanted in an excessive way. For instance, Percy Jackson and trusting people, Harry Potter and moodiness, Katniss Everdeen and terrible people skills.
The elf, Captain Holly Short, in Artemis Fowl is not exempt from this. From years of working around people who do not value her, Holly has developed into an extremely hard-shelled person. She has a fair moral compass and puts trust in people when she shouldn’t. Her adrenaline overrides her logical thinking. She is fast-acting, which isn’t necessarily a bad trait, yet it can lead to some…traumatic situations.
During one of the first times we see Holly, she is saving mud people (humans) from a troll attack. She uses all her magic and in a heat of frustration, Commander Root orders Holly to restore her magic, which is how during the ritual, she ended up getting kidnapped.
Holly Short isn’t a perfect person. She is the foil to Artemis Fowl. Where Artemis doesn’t care about killing anyone or taking advantage of others, Holly reels him back to a moral path. She keeps that evil mastermind on a short leash, and it does just as much good as it does terrible.
Flipping to a bad example, in the Artemis Fowl movie, however, Holly doesn’t seem to showcase any flaws. She wasn’t even kidnapped trying to restore her magic. The movie Holly, despite being kidnapped for a reason that was poorly explained, became fast friends with Artemis. She appears as a forgiving, non-grudge-holding elf.
Tips for the Writer
Give your characters flaws. If they’re consumed by positive traits, twist those traits into negatives. In reality, no one is perfect. Don’t make characters who are. Make characters who make the wrong choices. Characters who have guilt and regrets because of their decisions.
Writer’s Challenge
It is a characteristic of storytelling to document both pain and joy. Write a scene that is incredibly happy because of the decisions your character made. It can be as simple as deciding to bake a cake and sharing it with the rest of the cast or as complex as defeating the big bad.
Now, the fun part. Write the exact mirror. Write what happens if your character decides against baking a cake or makes a decision where they end up putting everyone in harm's way. Don’t hold yourself back—your imagination’s the limit.
Strength
The strong female character doesn’t need to be the strongest character in the world. In fact, if you start off already outrageously strong, where can the character grow to? Think Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice. If she wasn’t biased at the beginning of the novel, there would’ve been no story.
The reaction to opposition is what makes the strong female character strong. Not muscles or seduction. The reaction to opposition.
Yes, your character can have physical strength, and grow stronger as the story progresses, but not all strength is physical. Think mental, emotional, or physical.
Going back to the Artemis Fowl example, Holly Short’s strength appears in her reaction to trials. She’s a quick thinker and finds herself in new situations. In the novels, she was the first female elf to attend the pilot academy, the first female in LEPrecon (an elite division of the police force), the first fairy kidnapped, and so many other firsts throughout the series.
Not only does she find herself in many trials, but she overcomes them. During the events of the third book, The Eternity Code, Holly was the first officer contacted due to an event caused by the criminal, Artemis Fowl. By the last book (and within two-ish years [time travel makes that time bit hazy]), Holly is the most valuable officer within the LEPrecon. She has championed the loss of magic, kidnapping, evil masterminds, cloning lemurs, mountainous trolls, demons, and global catastrophes.
But how can strength fail a character? In the movie, strength fails when there’s nothing to overcome. Just look at the ranks of the LEPrecon. One of the biggest points of development in the novels is that Holly is the first female LEPrecon, however, in the movie, Commander Root is not Julius Root, but simply Commander Root, a female commander.
I have many irks with the movie trying to play into Hollywood’s opinions of what inclusion and empowerment are by destroying character arcs. (Don’t get me started on Juliet Butler OR Butler Butler). The novel’s Holly Short is empowered because she can overcome stereotypes and the patriarchy.
By making Commander Root a female, Disney eradicated the pressure of being a test subject off Holly’s shoulders. She is diminished into a simple officer, one who has no stakes. In fact, in the book, the entire reason she wasn’t kicked off the force was that she broke herself out of the Fowl Cellar and got half the ransom gold back. The movie had no such stake.
Tips for the Writer
Determine what strength your character has. Is it mental, emotional, or physical? What opposition can you throw in their path to make them struggle, develop, and sometimes fail, but eventually win? And if you’re writing a tragedy, why can’t they win? If Elizabeth Bennet never decided to look at Mr. Darcy through a new lens, that would’ve been considered a tragedy because Elizabeth couldn’t overcome her preconceived bias.
Give your characters room to grow by shoving opposition in their face.
Female
The strong female character is yes, feminine. They’re female. The biggest piece of advice I can say here is that are the character’s achievements impressive because they are a woman? For example, if they were a man, would it have been a big deal? If so, is the character really a strong female character?
Now do not mistake me. If you change the gender of your character to male, then that defeats the whole purpose of them being female. Do not mistakenly think you can just switch them back and forth willy-nilly. Building culture is the biggest way to determine what the female fears are in your story and how the character can revolve around those fears while still being a strong character.
There are many great examples of women in stories who are prejudiced against and their stories revolve around that. Mulan, for example, is not allowed in the army because she’s a woman. This builds culture.
We want to see culture in a story. That is where these ideas of “wow it’s cool that character is a woman because it’s not allowed” come from. But Mulan isn’t impressive because she’s a woman. She’s impressive because she’s a woman and she defeated Shan Yu (in the Disney animated film), who is the antagonist no one in the story was able to defeat.
Holly Short is the first woman in the LEPrecon. She’s the trial. Commander Root, constantly reminds Holly that she could lose her position in the LEPrecon in the blink of an eye or he could mark the inclusion of women into the LEPrecon as a failed trial.
It’s impressive that Holly is a woman who walked away with gold and magic against Artemis Fowl.
I already mentioned above that Commander Root was a woman in the movie. This degrades the culture of the story. This took away the stakes of the impressive acts that Holly did to escape the cellar. Instead, Holly felt like a little girl who received a ton of support from her superior officer and just decided she wanted to be besties with her captor.
Tips for the Writer
What traits of femininity does your character possess? If you replace your character with a man, is the opposition they overcome still impressive? And if you replace their gender, does the character still work? Are they facing any fears that females have? What about their story’s culture, what fears are presented in their culture that can push them to fight against those fears?
And for the record, being sultry and seductive is technically a form of femininity, but it’s a form of femininity that no average/normal woman can relate to. We are not puppets with big boobs. That is not femininity. In moderation, this has the potential to be an okay character trait or plot device, but it’s overused and feels like you’re stringing your characters up in a candy shop window.
The strong female character is a character who does exhibit strength—but should develop like any other character. They can even start physically strong and have an emotional journey, or the exact opposite. Or they don’t even have to have physical strength at all, just emotional or mental.
